Lapful (sort of) of adorable hellhounds
Some things change in two years.
And in case you’re wondering, I’m sitting in the dog bed because Peter kept &^%$£”!!!!! failing to take the freaking photograph and hellhounds were beginning to feel a trifle ill used. Here they are lying there peacefully, trying to work on the deep, profound, uninterruptible sleep they’ll be in when they are offered dinner, and someone keeps trying to roust them out and make them pretend to sit in someone’s lap when it’s perfectly obvious this is not possible. Now all I have to do is teach Peter to press the little silver button and not cut the top of my head off at the same time.
Lapful of raging hellhounds
. . . because there’s the two of them, illustrating in exemplary fashion the essential dichotomy of the hellhounds’ personalities. Which, I might add, pertains to this day.
This is also where they acquired their collective denomination; I must have sent out twenty sets of these photos, with these same headings.
Awwwwwwwwww.
Lapful of adorable puppies
These two photos are probably my favourites of all the puppy pics. . . .
It’s the hellhounds’ birthday!
And we’re having duck and champagne.*
Well, they get a little. Or would. If they ever get around to, you know, eating. Sigh.
. . . Later. Okay, they’re eating. So, one more day down and 5475 to go (seventeen is a pretty good age for a dog. Or maybe they’ll suddenly DISCOVER EATING when they get old). SIGH.
However, I’m telling you the duck is lovely. And the champagne. Maybe they were waiting for the champagne. If they’re holding out for champagne, it’s going to be a long 5475 days.
* And stuffing and gravy! And I’m not going to weigh myself tomorrow!
Going to bed early
I am going to bed early. Which is going to be a good trick, because it’s already late. It’s always late on a Friday (so to speak) because of bell practise. It’s August* and everyone’s on holiday, so practises are rather hit or miss lately, although I’m worrying that this area seems to be having a downturn in ringing numbers generally. They cancelled last week’s Wednesday practise, and that tower never cancels. And slow tool that I am I need my second practise a week. As well as my once-a-month third: and last Monday Niall and I were stiffed for the second month in a row** by that ringing master–or anyone else with a key to the bell tower–and I won’t be going back next month. Niall was happy, however, he got one of the other two would-be ringers in a head lock and dragged her home to ring handbells with him and me. Local handbell ringing is in even worse shape than local tower ringing.
I’ve recently realised that I’ve crossed one of those invisible boundaries. I am pretty much still in the category of Any Time on a Rope Is Good Time in terms of practise, and even the stuff I theoretically know still needs shoring up, but the stuff I’m really trying to learn now requires skilled support from the rest of the band. I can spend weeks, sometimes, never getting out of my comfort zone, because the available band, which is to say the people who showed up to ring, isn’t up to it–except that there is no comfort zone in ringing, you can always have a mental spasm and go wrong. And I frequently do.
Tonight we were only seven–which means ringing on six bells–and five of us, which is to say them, were some of our good ringers. When you’re the only wavery one the others can kind of straitjacket you in place. First we rang bob minor, which is one of the methods I should know, but I’m kind of out of practise–which is the other drawback to learning new methods; the fools and hopeless optimists around you expect you to remember what you’ve already learnt–so I was glad of the opportunity. Now the terrible, mind-rending, 3 am and sweating thing about bob minor is the Dreaded Three-Four Down Single, when you’re quietly coming down toward lead with a little, harmless three-four down dodge on the way, and the Evil Conductor calls a single. Calls make a mess, it’s what they’re for. So if you’re about to do a three-four down dodge in bob minor and Evil Conductor calls a single, you hang around in thirds place for two blows and then turn around and go up again. Trust me, this is horribly confusing, including the physical confusion of making a u-turn and going back the way you came. You ring a little differently going up (slower, because there’s one more bell coming between you and the front at each blow) and coming down (faster, because there’s one fewer bell, etc, as you all weave your way through the pattern), and while good ringers place their bell perfectly every stroke, for those of us who are not so good, momentum is also an issue with several hundred pounds of bell. And I had four three-four down singles in a row. I was preparing to stand my bell, leap across the room, and strangle Niall–who was conducting–when he called a fifth.*** Yes, all right, it was great practise. And I did get through all of them.
And then near the end Niall–who is ringing master in Edward’s absence–called for Grandsire. I dove–hopefully–for a rope, because Grandsire is slightly my bête noire–the method I’ve never really had the opportunity to learn properly but ought to know by now, by osmosis or something. The terrible horrible no good really bad call in Grandsire is a single when you’re making seconds, because then you have to make long thirds–four blows in thirds place–which come at you from a funny angle and then sort of duck and dive at you while you’re trying to balance in thirds place and it’s surprisingly hard to count to four. Which is one of the reasons double dodging (which you also do in Grandsire) is so gruesome–you can just about remember under, over, under (as you swap places and then back again with the bell you’re dodging with). . . but do you do it again or have you already done it again? It’s not like you have time to think, when you have two-thirds of a second to pull on your rope so your bell goes dong in the right place. There is only one right place and there are so many wrong ones . . . Anyway, this was a long touch with lots of calls and I galloped through any number of long thirds and came out the other end in the right place–good heavens, what am I doing here? At the end Roger, who had been conducting, complimented me. I don’t think he meant to sound surprised. . . .
But, speaking of bells and galloping, I have to go to bed early because I have a horse to ride tomorrow morning, followed by a wedding to ring at my Wednesday tower–because they’re so short handed they haven’t got enough locals–in the very early afternoon–having hurtled hellhounds first thing so they’ll let me. Usually after a walk they’ll crash out, but Chaos has taken to standing by the door gazing at me mournfully as I suit up to do something that does not involve hellhounds. Aaaugh. I’m already staying home for the next fifteen years on account of their undomesticated digestion, this dog cannot be making me feel guilty.
* * *
* Although you’d never know by the weather. It’s been RAINING AGAIN^ and while today has been a really beautiful day it’s been a really beautiful autumn day and everybody is putting their duvets back on their beds, except those of us who never took them off. I like to complain as much as the next person, and I feel pretty silly wearing wool in August, but if you’re asking me I’ll take chilly summers to hot ones any year. The hellhounds agree.
^ This is one of those towns that has a municipal hanging-basket system, where anyone who lives or has a shop front anywhere on the two main streets can hire a pre-planted hanging basket. You’re expected to do the deadheading, but The Man comes round with a tanker, and waters them. The tanker is this extraordinary little vehicle, about the size of half a Smart Car+ whose engine not only trundles it along but also pumps the water up through the hosepipe and thus into the short access pipe buried in every overhead basket. I love the nuts and bolts of things. Hanging flower baskets on Main Street are a great idea, very Town Pride . . . unless people forget to water them++ in which case they’re a very bad idea and will repel all those money-spending tourists every town wants.+++ Hence the motorised Gunga Din: he’d need shoulders like an Olympic shot putter if he didn’t have a pump, let alone an engine. You see him out there in all weathers, including torrential downpours. Um. I figured, okay, you’ve paid for your hanging basket and you’ve paid for it to get watered, so by golly it gets watered. But he says it’s not as silly as it looks: rain runs right off because the baskets are so densely planted.++++ Oh. They really are densely planted too. It’s perhaps slightly a pity however that they are densely planted in job lots of whatever was cheapest at the Hanging Basket Store. This year’s would have just about got away with the all available shades of pink, purple and blue colour scheme . . . till the scarlet geraniums on top started flowering. Ow, my eyes.
+ Not sure what they call them in the States. Those little half-length things that you can pull frontwards (or backwards) into a parallel-parking situation and have room for another one of you in the other half
++ Or go away on holiday and their neighbour forgets to water them
+++ Barring the odd curmudgeon living up a side street
++++ Well hurrah for carelessly home-planted hanging baskets that do get watered by rainfall.
** And a month ago it wasn’t even August
*** Note that the way methods fit together, every time a call is made, all the bits of work in that method have to be made by some bell. Some methods you can cushion a beginner a little more than others–my first quarter (peal) of bob minor, for example, Edward called around me so I never had to ring a Dreaded Three-Four Down Single. There are also various practise patterns where the poor suffering learner is made to ring The Thing She Fears Most over and over and over again. But in the ordinary free-for-all of a touch no one bell should be expected to ring the same beastly bit of work over and over and OVER again. But these things happen. Conducting is a total mystery to me^ but I have these visions (especially at 3 am) of bell geeks bending over bits of graph paper and cackling madly at the prospect of calling their next touch of Splendiferous Dork Major.
^ And I plan for it to remain that way